Caramelo (20 page)

29.

Trochemoche

            —
A
nd so, I wound up here in Chicago, a city cursed with not one but two bad words for a name: “the fucked one” and “the one who shat,” said Uncle Old, the frailest branch in that furious Reyes tree.

At seventy-three, Uncle Old was still laboring like a tired Sisyphus, though everything hurt him, even breathing. Uncle was at that stage in life when the body is a nuisance and one longs and looks forward to being dust again. He dragged this nuisance of a body about like someone wearing a winter coat on the hottest day in summer.

Poor thing. To tell the truth it gave one
lástima
to look at him. Pitiful, Narciso thought. Uncle Old and his sons, Chubby, Curly, and Snake, were wheezing out a living in an undersized upholstery shop on Halsted Street filled with oversized furniture, rotund chairs and sofas that produced great clouds of dust when punched. Maybe the Reyes ancestors and descendants were twirling about in those dusty galaxies. Maybe Destiny had paid Uncle Old back for all the pain he had created in one lifetime. Was the story true that when Uncle was still a young accountant in the Mexican army, he had stolen the payroll and run off to Cuba? They say in less than three months time he had exchanged the salary of 874 Mexican
federales
for Cuban rum, Cuban women, and Cuban gambling. —Isn’t it amazing how fast you can spend money! Then he had hobbled about like a hobo until he found himself at his
destino
.

—And then what happened, Uncle?

—Who remembers and who cares, the fact is I’m here.

Isn’t it funny
, Narciso thought. Back home he had heard nothing but bragging about the family Reyes. But here he was having coffee with one
of the stories, and the tale was far from heroic. Maybe there are some stories not worth mentioning.

—And what of the
mulatas
? Narciso asked. —Are they as sensational as they say?

—Sensational? said Uncle. —Exquisite is more like it.

Narciso waited for elaboration, but none came.

—Well, Uncle, aren’t you the least bit homesick for your
patria
? I bet with the revolution you could try and go back to Mexico and no one would be the wiser.

—Go back? said Uncle. —I’m better off here. Once, when I was passing through Raymondville, Texas, I almost stayed there. There was a little shorty who wanted me to marry her, but when I met her family, a whole room full of shorties seated on wooden fruit crates, and the front lawn nothing but a little square of dust, and the chickens pecking on this dust, and my own hair full of that dust too, I saw my future, all my children pecking like chickens in that miserable square of dust. No, thank you. I’m not a rich man, but at least I’m not scratching dirt.

Narciso thought there was enough dirt and dust in Uncle’s shop to make anyone scratch, but, of course, he didn’t say this.

—And now look. With everything you read in the papers, Uncle continued, —well, it’s better I didn’t stay in Texas, or the Texas Rangers would’ve chased me home, right?
^*

Because Uncle Old’s wife had died a long time ago, his house was a house of men, and as such there was no attention to things of the spirit. No tablecloth or napkins, no flower garden growing from an empty lard tin, no stack of clean pressed linen, no pretty plates. Items were spartan, utilitarian, makeshift, thrifty, and filthy. Newspapers served as a doormat, seat cushions, or tablecloth.
Fotonovela
pages sufficed as toilet reading and toilet paper. A bent nail on the bathroom door was the only defender of privacy. A coffee can and a galvanized tub were the bath. And so on and on. A helter-skelter,
trochemoche
, come-what-may,
venga lo que venga
style of living.

—There are three pleasures in the world, Uncle Old said, and laughed. —Eating, shitting, and fucking, in that order! He made fried bologna
tacos
. He used American cheese for
quesadillas
! What a barbarity! He scrambled eggs and wieners and served them on homemade flour
tortillas
. Each morning Uncle rolled out huge dusty towers of fresh flour
tortillas
for his boys and served them hot with butter and salt for breakfast,
or if he was feeling daring, with peanut butter. —Nothing like a hot peanut butter
taco
and a cup of coffee, Uncle said.

Uncle Old was badly dressed and, worse, bad-smelling. This affected the sensibilities of Narciso greatly, who had taken such pride in his lineage, and now to be confronted with his family “living like Hungarians,” meaning gypsies.

He wrote to his mother:
Why, they are no better than barbarians. I believe this is the influence of living in the United States, don’t you think? They live in the very upholstery shop, with walls made from fabric scraps partitioning the workspace from the kitchen, if it can be called a kitchen. A camp stove is how they cook and a wooden door placed across two sawhorses is their table. The beds are any available furniture awaiting upholstery, a sofa or possibly two chairs pushed together, or the kitchen table. This is how they live, worse than soldiers camping in the field, for at least soldiers have order. The saddest part is that neither my uncle nor my cousins think it strange or want for anything better. It is astonishing!

—And how did you learn to make the flour
tortillas
, Uncle? Narciso asked, since los Reyes were accustomed to eating corn
tortillas
.

—The army, Uncle said. —And necessity.

Narciso wrote: Tacos.
That’s all they eat here. Or hot dogs, which is like an American
taco.
You would think they’d forgotten a delicious squash blossom soup, or
chile en nogada
in walnut sauce and pomegranates, or red snapper Veracruz style, or any and all the other sublime delicacies of Mexican cooking. And what the Mexican restaurants here call Mexican food, it’s truly sad!

Narciso had arrived with hats, suits, linen shirts, and silk handkerchiefs with matching ascots. And here he was, expected to sweep the shop and strip furniture down to its frame! He’d never held a hammer, much less a broom. His imported British wing tips were ruined within a week, the leather scuffed, the soles pocked with tacks. Each night he plucked them out with pliers, counting as he worked while the cousins laughed at him behind his back.

What was truly barbarous was the schoolroom map of the United States his uncle had glued to the bathroom wall with corn syrup. It depicted the states in different colors with their capitals marked with a star. Each time he entered the bathroom, Narciso made it a point to memorize one state and its capital. He thought this knowledge might keep his memory sharp and distinguish him from the lowlifes called his cousins.

—But tell me, Uncle, why did you put the map up with corn syrup?

—Because there wasn’t any glue on hand when we thought to hang it.

All in all, Uncle Old seemed satisfied with what the United States had given him. It wasn’t a luxurious life, but it was a life and it was his. He had picked up a little of this and that over the years, and the this and that had paid a living. So, unlike his cousin Eleuterio of the piano hands, Uncle Old’s hands were covered with the calluses and blisters of his craft, the art and labor of making sofas and chairs.
Awful work
, Narciso thought,
thank God I don’t have to do this forever
. His own hands with their perfect Palmer penmanship were not used to the hammer, and standing all day on hard concrete was giving him corns as stout and sturdy as the shells on the backs of turtles. —My feet are very sensitive, Narciso complained, soaking his feet nightly in a tub of hot water.
What a prince
, Uncle thought, but didn’t say this.

The condition of Prince Narciso’s feet did not improve during the seven years he lived with his Uncle Old. They were as abused at the end of his U.S. stay as they were in the beginning, not from labor by then, but from pleasure. Narciso danced all weekend at the black-and-tan clubs on South State Street. This was during the time the Charleston was outlawed in some U.S. cities.
^†

In those days the most beautiful women were the stars of the silent screen. Women everywhere copied them and painted their mouths like valentines. But the woman Narciso Reyes fell in love with not only had a mouth like a cupid’s heart, but an ass like one upside down.

He’d seen her live onstage, a girl with beautiful legs and a behind like no one else’s. The woman was like the milk with a drizzle of coffee his mother served him as a boy before bedtime, coffee with lots of sugar, a woman who made him happy just by looking at her. She was happiness, a born comedienne. The audience was hers the moment she entered the spotlight. Her act was part pantomime, part acrobat, part dance. She laughed and winked, crossed her eyes, put her hands on her hips, pouted, pirouetted, stuck her butt out and shook it, did a Charleston, then a split, a somersault, then waddled off the stage only to cartwheel back and finish with a shimmy that shattered the house and nearly killed Narciso.

Narciso came to every show, made a pest of himself backstage, and fancied himself in love. He could not believe his good fortune when she plunked herself down on his lap one day, all arms and wiggling tongue.

Oh, to have such a woman as this. When he pressed his mouth to
hers, he was filled with joy too. The laughter gurgled and overflowed and entered him, and energized and filled him with life. He decided he would marry this Freda McDonald who called herself Tumpy, who went by the stage name of Josephine Wells, showgirl with caramel skin. He would take care of her, he would tame her and make her his. He wept to hear her tale of how she had had to fight for everything that was hers. How she had run away from her hometown of Saint Louis in 1917, the same year as the race riots. How whites worried Southern Negroes were taking away their jobs even though most whites wouldn’t work for $2.35 a day in the sewer-pipe factory if you paid them!

—Freda McDonald, please do me the kindness of accepting …

—I told you, nobody calls me Freda but my mother. Can’t you read the marquee? My name is Jo. Jo Wells. But you can call me Tumpy. Which Narciso pronounced as “
Tom-pi
.” His English made her laugh.

—Tompita, heart of mine, I must ask you this …

—Honey, you name it.

—Please will you …? The capital of Idaho, what is?

—Shit, hell if I know.

—Oh, you
keed!

And they wrestled and laughed and squealed, he trying to impress her with the names of all the U.S. states and their capitals—Springfield, Illinois; Sacramento, California; Austin, Texas—and she laughing and laughing at his funny way of talking.

In his arms her body glittered and shimmered and squirmed. It was like making love with a river of mercury, a boa constrictor, a weasel. It was lovely,
bruto
, tender,
bonito, bonito
. He’d had women pink as a rabbit, and dark as bitter chocolate, and all the
caramelo
shades in between. He’d had and had, and he was never filled up, never.

Until now.

Narciso wrote a letter home to his father:
Father, she is Spanish like you. Well, Spanish on her father’s side. Her mother is half Cherokee and half Negro. But all together she is a real American and wonderful, and when you meet her …

¡Qué!
What!
Una negra
to be his daughter-in-law!
Una negra
to become a Reyes! But this was too much. Eleuterio forgot that his own family would’ve disowned him if they’d met Regina. Of course, like everyone, his memory was selective and he didn’t think of this.

It happened that Narciso’s letter arrived while his father was eating
breakfast, but Eleuterio was never able to finish the meal. The news in his son’s letter caused Eleuterio his own death shimmy. Regina wired her son:
FATHER DEAD RETURN HOME
.

—My sky, I tell you in all confidence, for you I will die, but I have compromises now. You will wait? Promise, Tompita, my queen.

—Chili pie, I’ll do nothing but cry till you send for me.

As Destiny would have it, Narciso was boarding a train south to the border when Freda Josephine Tumpy McDonald Wells was also standing on another track in a felt cloche and a raccoon-collar coat, a cardboard suitcase with all her belongings beside her. Freda left Chicago with the company that same afternoon en route to Philadelphia to marry Billy Baker, abandon Billy Baker for New York, abandon New York for Paris, dance with a banana skirt, and well, the rest everybody knows is history.

^*
In 1915 more than half of the Mexican-American population emigrated from the Valley of Texas into war-torn Mexico fleeing the Texas Rangers, rural police ordered to suppress an armed rebellion of Mexican Americans protesting Anglo-American authority in South Texas. Supported by U.S. cavalry, their bullying led to the death of hundreds, some say thousands, of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, who were executed without trial. The end result was that Mexican-owned land was cleared, allowing development by Anglo newcomers. So often were Mexicans killed at the hands of the “Rinches,” that the
San Antonio Express-News
said it “has become so commonplace” that “it created little or no interest.” Little or no interest unless you were Mexican
.

^†
The Charleston was named “the Dance of Death” after a Boston tragedy that claimed 147 lives when a Charleston-throbbing dance floor collapsed in a heap, causing the building to do the Charleston too
. Variety
reported: “The offbeat rhythm of the Charleston, reinforced by the indulgence in things alcoholic is said to have caused the Hotel Pickwick to sway so violently that it fell apart.”